Meet @JonasMattheww (permanent ID 2494218428) an account with a GAN-generated face spamming #ImpeachBiden tweets (one of which got over 500 RTs).
(GAN = "generative adversarial network", the AI technique used by thispersondoesnotexist.com to generate fake faces)
cc: @ZellaQuixote
How do we know that @JonasMattheww's profile image is GAN-generated? There are several signs, such as nonsensical clothing that melts into the neck and background.
GAN-generated faces (at least the commonly-available ones) have the telltale trait that the primary facial features (especially eyes) are in the same location on each image. This becomes obvious when multiple GAN-generated faces are blended together.
More on GAN-generated pics and their use on Twitter (and elsewhere) in this thread:
Some tips on identifying GAN-generated faces in this thread:
When one retrieves retweets via Twitter's free API, the text of these tweets is tagged with the name the account being retweeted had at the time of the retweet. Applying this technique to @JonasMattheww reveals that the account was named @/Zeplin20 prior to July 3, 2022.
Looking at old Wayback Machine archives corroborates this finding: the account presently named @JonasMattheww (permanent ID 2494218428) was previously named @/Zeplin20.
In additional to changing handles, @JonasMattheww (permanent ID 2494218428) also deleted all tweets prior to April 30, 2022. The deleted content (under the name @/Zeplin20) was in a mix of English and Turkish.
More on detecting renamed Twitter accounts in this thread:
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